I guess I *have* to post something, since I have lived in Titusville for a while, and also lived in the region for a shorter time in the early shuttle program days.
I have worked on the shuttle program and currently work in commercial space.
Titusville is just a small town in Florida, always has been, and almost certainly always will be. That isn't necessarily a bad thing if that is what you are looking for.
And, as others have mentioned, has been famously "anti-growth" during many periods in history. Which probably hasn't been that helpful when growth was a little more active around here.
The city has had a complex relationship with the space program and the tourist industry in Florida. Most of the "decay" are overly ambitious structures from the Apollo days (IE malls and large resort hotels). They were pretty run down even in the early "boom" days of the shuttle program. They have only suffered more under the extreme impact of the shuttle program shutdown.
In some cases, this was turned around into finally demolishing these structures and replacing them with something more appropriate for the area. There are newer hotels of the normal "big box" type on the interstate exits now, and most of the riverfront "resorts" are gone or converted to other purposes.
Like every town (in Florida particularly), attempts are made to attract tourism. There have been a number of failed schemes since the Apollo days. Before my time, there was a jungle park owned by Johnny Weismuller of "Tarzan" fame, there was a tacky "JFK" museum in the shuttle days, etc. etc. It all looks so good when you are surrounded by "big tourism". Orlando to the west, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine to the north, the Cape Canaveral cruise ports to the east. But, it's just those places that mean you are generally bypassed for activities that they all do better.
The space center is a huge tourist attraction, but you mostly get tourists from Orlando who just come out to the center and then head back.
And remember, Titusville is a "river front" town, not "ocean front". That makes a huge difference.
On the plus side, We do have access to unspoiled beach and wildlife in the national parks north of the space center. It is a great locale for fishing and boating. In spite of them letting *me* in, lots of smart and industrious folks live here (either retired or still active from the space center). It is a short drive to just about any tourist activity you would like to participate in (beaches, theme parks, etc.). But, like most small towns, it is short on great night spots, trendy food places, hip hotels and boutique shopping. But it has tiny, small-town versions of most of this stuff too.
Not a town booster, but it's really a pretty routine place of its type, just twisted a bit with all the big ups and downs of the biggest local industry. Any improvements in the employment numbers can't help but be a boost to the community (and others in the region). That isn't much of a mystery when you took the hit of the shuttle shutdown.
Oddly I was just watching the original "Terminator" the other night (got a cheapie Blu-ray with extras), and noticed some of his "code" overlays were COBOL! Skynet has been around a while, apparently (or else COBOL makes a big come-back in the future).
Didn't see this posted previously, but keep in mind that only the Linux configuration of the Dell allows the buyer to order the larger Solid-State hard drive and more than one meg of memory.
I think this means that anybody planning a dual-boot or even XP machine may be buying the Linux one to get more memory and "disk" space.
Not that a lot of folks aren't sticking to Linux as well (in general, netbooks have been good to Linux), just sayin'...
"A REAL re-entry vehicle" (that exists only on paper)? "Finally?" "Useless wings?"
Good grief, who writes this stuff anymore? I'm sure ESA's ideas are interesting and innovative, but making this out to be the savior of the manned space program is a bit facetious to say the least.
Is it not essentially a lifting body (in spite of some new ideas)? NASA pioneered this concept, which was intended to be applied to reentry vehicles at some point. The concept was most recently expressed in the X38B crew return vehicle.
Admittedly, the X38 was canceled, but due to budgetary reasons, not because it was a bad idea. And this program was well along (with real flight hardware) when canceled.
I think some of the data centers (or more correctly, the companies who operate them) may have some reluctance because of the potential regulation this may create...
1) Gather data from volunteer data centers. 2) Establish "Energy Star" rating. 3) Use "Energy Star" rating to regulate how big datacenters can be, what kind of layout they must have, etc., etc. 4) Demand that any company bidding on government contracts must be "Energy Star" level 5 or whatever. New regulatory branch to monitor all this...
In general the data centers probably feel no good can come from it. Energy is getting more expensive every day. There is an obvious profit incentive to use less of it to operate your datacenter. This needs no government regulation.
Please don't paint all of us "locals" with the same brush. It's going to be launched "in my back yard", and I don't have a problem with it. It's traditionally what we do here (launch rockets), and more than adequate safety margins are in place as many here have detailed.
Now, driving on I-95 to go see the launch... That worries me a bit more, risk-wise, but I'll get over it...
Will they have to have special "high-definition" dogs to sniff out the HD-DVD or Blueray discs?
Better yet, can they develop a dog that can smell which format is going to win out in the end?
Actually, I belive the dogs were actually "triggering" on idiocy. They were either getting false triggers on the dingbats who thought this whole thing up, or were using exclusively Adam Sandler movies as a test article...
I too worked at HP at the trailing edge of what is widely considered the "glory days", probably about the same time as Omnigeek.
HP was a great company. I was in a position to lose my job there when minis such as the HP3000 started to lose their grip (and more important to me, the move away from field software support). I was offered a position at the phone support center, but turned it down (bah! I thought).
After a succession of ho-hum jobs, I regetted that decision for quite a while, but finally got settled in a position I liked. But after Carley took over and started selling everything valuable bits of the company and it's culture off, while merging with a competitor (who was also struggling), I was glad I was out.
I hope this bodes well for the future of HP. The people that work there deserve it.
After this and Lucent, will Carley get another plum job? Seems unlikely to me, so probably, yeah...
I agree with what you are saying. The point I was trying to make was that in situations like this, often governments will refuse to allow a free flow of (often) useful information. This state of affairs is tolerated, ironically, in the spirit of cooperation to get the job done.
According to what the article said, in this case, it appears to be a decision by Alenia for strictly commerical reasons. But it could have been ASI, the Italian or US governments that allowed it to stand.
"Nor was there any 'nation-to-nation finger-pointing."
Thank goodness they weren't the typical Slashdotter these days (apparently)...
May not be that simple...
on
Saving Huygens
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This is not a simple subcontractor arrangement. It is cooperation between government agencies in different governments, each of which has private contractors working for them.
Besides the obvious contractual nightmare this represents, there is also the issue of Export control between governments, which cannot be countermanded with a simple non-disclosure.
IMNAL, but I work on a similar project and you need to learn some of this stuff, sadly, to get your work done. I'm hopeful this incident will help to clear up these sort of cooperation issues in the future.
Good work in resolving this all involved! Remember Slashdotters, we explore to learn...
Maybe it was that some of their shows were perceived (by Comcast) to have a "lazie-faire" attitude about DRM that helped the decision along? You know, shows about modding X-Boxes, copying DVDs and the like?
What little I've seen of G4 seems to be nice safe "shootouts" between consoles and games, and "sneak previews" of game titles available at a retail store near you. Not Mame or XBMC...
Admittedly, we have a high population of retirees (some getting a little senile), but they are our burden to bear. We also have Kennedy Space Center, for one example, so not everybody is an idiot.
I think you are confusing the population as a whole and just those stupid enough to buy whatever crap products you sell/support...
In the case of the Xbox, at least, that may not be the case. There are a few factors that figure into this:
* The game selection isn't as good on Xbox. * Many companies are starting to introduce digital media players (particularly video). * Microsoft is trying to push the PC as a media center. * People are making a good business selling imported region-free DVD players. * Everything digital that is coming out is also crippled by DRM additions.
So get a little clever with a $149 Xbox, and you have a very, very good digital media player (and a region-free DVD player). And no crippled DRM.
Suddenly, if you look at it from a non-game playing standpoint, it makes perfect sense (at least for XBox). Digital media players are the next big gadget, and they are expensive as a result.
I think, over time, a larger percentage are modding for other reasons, or at least a dual reason (copying games as well).
I am using my XBox (with 200gig drive) for XBox Media Center. I hardly play the few games I got with the device.
Frankly Xbox Media Player is a superior solution for playing various digital media than other set-top box solutions. It is only matched by a "full-blown" PC, which I don't want in my living room.
The software will play nearly anything, which makes some of the other "set-box" solutions seem pathetic due to the limitations of what format video they require.
Yes, I know the XBox is essentially a PC, but it has HD output, a wireless remote, a (region free with the software)DVD Player and so forth.
Sure, I could build a shuttle or some other small form factor PC to do the same tricks, but I've got less than $400 bucks in this solution all out.
I know they expected to make money off of me on all the games I would buy, so that's why I got it so cheap. That's not a great deal for them, but regardless, I'm not pirating games!
It's posts like that that perpetuate the myth that SlashDot is read by the "average" American!;)
Seriously, if the controllers at JPL can play the Baha Men to celebrate rolling on to another planet, certainly a few geeks at SlashDot can have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
I'm amazed that there is all this talk about "NASA landed a probe on Mars about 4 years ago", completely missing the two landers that set down almost 30 years ago!
There is a lot of healthy competetion in planetary exploration. But in a "business" (more than that obviously) where it takes years of effort and YEARS of waiting for your efforts to cruise to their destination (not to mention the tension of launch), seeing anybody make it all work is a cause for celebration.
Anybody who is in this work for any length of time has had to weather a failure, and successes are few enough. I'm sure congratulatory messages (as well as actual) data will flow between planetary exploration scientists in many countries.
This "losing their edge" talk is kind of like the difference between how two veteran football players treat each other versus the rabid fans of their two (current) teams who are fighting in the stands. It's respectful competition v/s rabid fans that can only fantasize about being on the field.
If you worked on designing a semi-autonomous Mars roving vehicle, I don't think you would feel like you were "losing your edge", if you were in the UK or the USA (or any other place)...
True, they had patents, and defended them (at least in the beginning).
However, my understanding was that they were persuaded (by Henry Ford, the story goes) to release their hold on some of the patents for the good of the development of flight.
I don't think others "waited for the patents to expire".
I'm not an expert on the subject, so I'm not sure how much of this is hearsay...
Yes, I believe the Wrights only grudgingly returned the flier from London (!) to the Smithsonian. They were (rightfully) angry at the "wishful thinking" support the Smithsonian showed toward Langley. This would go a long way toward explaining the draconian nature of the contract. Can't say as I blame them.
The Wrights did an astounding amount of laborious work in developing their flier, and carefully documented their results. Sometimes certain people deserve the credit. This is one of those times.
The only people I think deserve more credit are some of the locals that helped out that day. But that is an understandable oversight.
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Actually, there is at least one EV shipping with a gearbox. Clutch and all!
http://www.victorymotorcycles....
And it's a pretty cool one too!
Did he bring the Gorilla suit home with him, or can we look forward to more zero-gee Gorilla appearances?
I guess I *have* to post something, since I have lived in Titusville for a while, and also lived in the region for a shorter time in the early shuttle program days.
I have worked on the shuttle program and currently work in commercial space.
Titusville is just a small town in Florida, always has been, and almost certainly always will be. That isn't necessarily a bad thing if that is what you are looking for.
And, as others have mentioned, has been famously "anti-growth" during many periods in history. Which probably hasn't been that helpful when growth was a little more active around here.
The city has had a complex relationship with the space program and the tourist industry in Florida. Most of the "decay" are overly ambitious structures from the Apollo days (IE malls and large resort hotels). They were pretty run down even in the early "boom" days of the shuttle program. They have only suffered more under the extreme impact of the shuttle program shutdown.
In some cases, this was turned around into finally demolishing these structures and replacing them with something more appropriate for the area. There are newer hotels of the normal "big box" type on the interstate exits now, and most of the riverfront "resorts" are gone or converted to other purposes.
Like every town (in Florida particularly), attempts are made to attract tourism. There have been a number of failed schemes since the Apollo days. Before my time, there was a jungle park owned by Johnny Weismuller of "Tarzan" fame, there was a tacky "JFK" museum in the shuttle days, etc. etc. It all looks so good when you are surrounded by "big tourism". Orlando to the west, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine to the north, the Cape Canaveral cruise ports to the east. But, it's just those places that mean you are generally bypassed for activities that they all do better.
The space center is a huge tourist attraction, but you mostly get tourists from Orlando who just come out to the center and then head back.
And remember, Titusville is a "river front" town, not "ocean front". That makes a huge difference.
On the plus side, We do have access to unspoiled beach and wildlife in the national parks north of the space center. It is a great locale for fishing and boating. In spite of them letting *me* in, lots of smart and industrious folks live here (either retired or still active from the space center). It is a short drive to just about any tourist activity you would like to participate in (beaches, theme parks, etc.). But, like most small towns, it is short on great night spots, trendy food places, hip hotels and boutique shopping. But it has tiny, small-town versions of most of this stuff too.
Not a town booster, but it's really a pretty routine place of its type, just twisted a bit with all the big ups and downs of the biggest local industry. Any improvements in the employment numbers can't help but be a boost to the community (and others in the region). That isn't much of a mystery when you took the hit of the shuttle shutdown.
Oddly I was just watching the original "Terminator" the other night (got a cheapie Blu-ray with extras), and noticed some of his "code" overlays were COBOL! Skynet has been around a while, apparently (or else COBOL makes a big come-back in the future).
Didn't see this posted previously, but keep in mind that only the Linux configuration of the Dell allows the buyer to order the larger Solid-State hard drive and more than one meg of memory.
I think this means that anybody planning a dual-boot or even XP machine may be buying the Linux one to get more memory and "disk" space.
Not that a lot of folks aren't sticking to Linux as well (in general, netbooks have been good to Linux), just sayin'...
"A REAL re-entry vehicle" (that exists only on paper)? "Finally?" "Useless wings?"
Good grief, who writes this stuff anymore? I'm sure ESA's ideas are interesting and innovative, but making this out to be the savior of the manned space program is a bit facetious to say the least.
Is it not essentially a lifting body (in spite of some new ideas)? NASA pioneered this concept, which was intended to be applied to reentry vehicles at some point. The concept was most recently expressed in the X38B crew return vehicle.
Admittedly, the X38 was canceled, but due to budgetary reasons, not because it was a bad idea. And this program was well along (with real flight hardware) when canceled.
I think some of the data centers (or more correctly, the companies who operate them) may have some reluctance because of the potential regulation this may create...
1) Gather data from volunteer data centers.
2) Establish "Energy Star" rating.
3) Use "Energy Star" rating to regulate how big datacenters can be, what kind of layout they must have, etc., etc.
4) Demand that any company bidding on government contracts must be "Energy Star" level 5 or whatever. New regulatory branch to monitor all this...
In general the data centers probably feel no good can come from it. Energy is getting more expensive every day. There is an obvious profit incentive to use less of it to operate your datacenter. This needs no government regulation.
Please don't paint all of us "locals" with the same brush. It's going to be launched "in my back yard", and I don't have a problem with it. It's traditionally what we do here (launch rockets), and more than adequate safety margins are in place as many here have detailed.
Now, driving on I-95 to go see the launch... That worries me a bit more, risk-wise, but I'll get over it...
Sounds like Cape Canaveral when the space program first arrived...
Well, ok, they had a military presence, but Cape Breton has a cruise port!
Will they have to have special "high-definition" dogs to sniff out the HD-DVD or Blueray discs?
Better yet, can they develop a dog that can smell which format is going to win out in the end?
Actually, I belive the dogs were actually "triggering" on idiocy. They were either getting false triggers on the dingbats who thought this whole thing up, or were using exclusively Adam Sandler movies as a test article...
Hmmmm... Is there any way a whole article and responses can be classified as "Flamebait"?
I don't think there's one worthwhile response here, including mine.
I too worked at HP at the trailing edge of what is widely considered the "glory days", probably about the same time as Omnigeek.
HP was a great company. I was in a position to lose my job there when minis such as the HP3000 started to lose their grip (and more important to me, the move away from field software support). I was offered a position at the phone support center, but turned it down (bah! I thought).
After a succession of ho-hum jobs, I regetted that decision for quite a while, but finally got settled in a position I liked. But after Carley took over and started selling everything valuable bits of the company and it's culture off, while merging with a competitor (who was also struggling), I was glad I was out.
I hope this bodes well for the future of HP. The people that work there deserve it.
After this and Lucent, will Carley get another plum job? Seems unlikely to me, so probably, yeah...
I agree with what you are saying. The point I was trying to make was that in situations like this, often governments will refuse to allow a free flow of (often) useful information. This state of affairs is tolerated, ironically, in the spirit of cooperation to get the job done.
According to what the article said, in this case, it appears to be a decision by Alenia for strictly commerical reasons. But it could have been ASI, the Italian or US governments that allowed it to stand.
From the article:
"Nor was there any 'nation-to-nation finger-pointing."
Thank goodness they weren't the typical Slashdotter these days (apparently)...
This is not a simple subcontractor arrangement. It is cooperation between government agencies in different governments, each of which has private contractors working for them.
Besides the obvious contractual nightmare this represents, there is also the issue of Export control between governments, which cannot be countermanded with a simple non-disclosure.
IMNAL, but I work on a similar project and you need to learn some of this stuff, sadly, to get your work done. I'm hopeful this incident will help to clear up these sort of cooperation issues in the future.
Good work in resolving this all involved! Remember Slashdotters, we explore to learn...
I thought that was Canadians, what with the whole Vancouver Island thing and all...
This may also explain the excess of Canadian Sci-Fi writers working underground in the states.
Maybe it was that some of their shows were perceived (by Comcast) to have a "lazie-faire" attitude about DRM that helped the decision along? You know, shows about modding X-Boxes, copying DVDs and the like?
What little I've seen of G4 seems to be nice safe "shootouts" between consoles and games, and "sneak previews" of game titles available at a retail store near you. Not Mame or XBMC...
Admittedly, we have a high population of retirees (some getting a little senile), but they are our burden to bear. We also have Kennedy Space Center, for one example, so not everybody is an idiot.
I think you are confusing the population as a whole and just those stupid enough to buy whatever crap products you sell/support...
If you have ever owned an old Fiat, the concept of Italian electronics spontaneously combusting is not that far fetched. ;)
In the case of the Xbox, at least, that may not be the case. There are a few factors that figure into this:
* The game selection isn't as good on Xbox.
* Many companies are starting to introduce digital media players (particularly video).
* Microsoft is trying to push the PC as a media center.
* People are making a good business selling imported region-free DVD players.
* Everything digital that is coming out is also crippled by DRM additions.
So get a little clever with a $149 Xbox, and you have a very, very good digital media player (and a region-free DVD player). And no crippled DRM.
Suddenly, if you look at it from a non-game playing standpoint, it makes perfect sense (at least for XBox). Digital media players are the next big gadget, and they are expensive as a result.
I think, over time, a larger percentage are modding for other reasons, or at least a dual reason (copying games as well).
I am using my XBox (with 200gig drive) for XBox Media Center. I hardly play the few games I got with the device.
Frankly Xbox Media Player is a superior solution for playing various digital media than other set-top box solutions. It is only matched by a "full-blown" PC, which I don't want in my living room.
The software will play nearly anything, which makes some of the other "set-box" solutions seem pathetic due to the limitations of what format video they require.
Yes, I know the XBox is essentially a PC, but it has HD output, a wireless remote, a (region free with the software)DVD Player and so forth.
Sure, I could build a shuttle or some other small form factor PC to do the same tricks, but I've got less than $400 bucks in this solution all out.
I know they expected to make money off of me on all the games I would buy, so that's why I got it so cheap. That's not a great deal for them, but regardless, I'm not pirating games!
It's posts like that that perpetuate the myth that SlashDot is read by the "average" American! ;)
Seriously, if the controllers at JPL can play the Baha Men to celebrate rolling on to another planet, certainly a few geeks at SlashDot can have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
I'm amazed that there is all this talk about "NASA landed a probe on Mars about 4 years ago", completely missing the two landers that set down almost 30 years ago!
There is a lot of healthy competetion in planetary exploration. But in a "business" (more than that obviously) where it takes years of effort and YEARS of waiting for your efforts to cruise to their destination (not to mention the tension of launch), seeing anybody make it all work is a cause for celebration.
Anybody who is in this work for any length of time has had to weather a failure, and successes are few enough. I'm sure congratulatory messages (as well as actual) data will flow between planetary exploration scientists in many countries.
This "losing their edge" talk is kind of like the difference between how two veteran football players treat each other versus the rabid fans of their two (current) teams who are fighting in the stands. It's respectful competition v/s rabid fans that can only fantasize about being on the field.
If you worked on designing a semi-autonomous Mars roving vehicle, I don't think you would feel like you were "losing your edge", if you were in the UK or the USA (or any other place)...
True, they had patents, and defended them (at least in the beginning).
However, my understanding was that they were persuaded (by Henry Ford, the story goes) to release their hold on some of the patents for the good of the development of flight.
I don't think others "waited for the patents to expire".
I'm not an expert on the subject, so I'm not sure how much of this is hearsay...
Yes, I believe the Wrights only grudgingly returned the flier from London (!) to the Smithsonian. They were (rightfully) angry at the "wishful thinking" support the Smithsonian showed toward Langley. This would go a long way toward explaining the draconian nature of the contract. Can't say as I blame them.
The Wrights did an astounding amount of laborious work in developing their flier, and carefully documented their results. Sometimes certain people deserve the credit. This is one of those times.
The only people I think deserve more credit are some of the locals that helped out that day. But that is an understandable oversight.